


werewolf gets groceries (gone wrong) (he was held at gunpoint)

by unrequited_heartbreak



Series: a collection of chapter 1's [3]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angst, Blood, Confrontations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Guns, Hurt/Comfort, Monster Hunters, Vampires eventually, Werewolves, Werewolves Turn Into Actual Wolves, lots of thoughts for this au eyes emoji
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27485221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unrequited_heartbreak/pseuds/unrequited_heartbreak
Summary: Wilbur gets held up in an alley by a very disoriented, very bloodied Tommy with a gun. And then they talk it out? Kind of?Basically, a very dramatic start to an Urban Fantasy AU I've been thinking a lot about recently.
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Series: a collection of chapter 1's [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2008417
Comments: 16
Kudos: 180





	werewolf gets groceries (gone wrong) (he was held at gunpoint)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first scene to a fic that will hopefully get much longer in the future! There are a lot of characters and plot points to cover, but I thought this would be a good start and it would motivate me to continue writing. Let me know what you think in the comments if you'd like to!
> 
> (also, in case you missed it—guns are mentioned frequently! nothing is actually shot though)
> 
> Hope you enjoy!! :DD

The last thing Wilbur had expected to see on his last-minute expedition for snacks was a bloodied teenage boy with a gun, but honestly, as a werewolf, he isn’t sure why he expected anything at all.

Wilbur’s arms are raised in surrender, eyes wide, doe-like; the street lamps like headlights. His heart is beating so hard he can feel it in his fingertips. The pulse runs centuries deep, both human and wolf know fear like they know air. His jacket tugs his shoulders down, heavy as lead. His car is parked mere meters away. There’s no way to reach it now.

His single bag of groceries lays discarded at his feet, recycled paper bag soaking up rainwater. The teenage boy stands a few feet away from him, wearing a scowl and muddy cargo pants. He’s tucked against the wall, out of the line of sight from the street. It’s a smart place to be—nobody can see them back here.

The steady drip of a gutter and the hum of some nearby generator wash over them in waves. Wilbur blinks, trying to clear the spots that dance across his eyes. Panic whispers, curling around his ankles, chaining him to the ground. 

He’s never encountered a hunter like this before.

“You’ve got a gun,” He says, out of breath.

“I’ve got a gun,” The boy narrows his eyes, playing along.

“Does your gun,” Wilbur pauses, shifts his posture and notices distantly that he might be having a panic attack. “Does your gun possibly have bullets that aren’t made of conventional bullet-crafting materials?”

“I know what you are,” The boy wipes sweat off of his nose with his shoulder, and smears whatever stains his jacket across his face. It might be blood. Wilbur stares at the smudge. 

“Is that a ye-”

“They’re silver bullets. Don’t come any closer.” The boy grips the gun with white-knuckled, shaking hands. He stares directly into Wilbur’s eyes, but his gaze is unfocused. His breathing is labored. 

After the first minute of the blinding panic of a gun in his face has worn off, Wilbur can see his surroundings a bit more clearly. He takes a long shallow breath and scans the alleyway where they stand, tries in vain to pick out a clear exit path. Corroded fire escapes, shattered glass, and graffiti greet him instead, and he turns back to his assailant.

The boy stands awkwardly, not letting his weight fall on one of his feet. There are ancient, ratty bandages holding his lanky frame together. His hair is dirtied, eyes tired, cheeks sullen. The poor thing looks half dead. Despite his height and the weapon in his hands, after the initial shock, Wilbur isn’t all that scared of him.

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Wilbur says, deceptively simple. He’s still getting his bearings, and snappy one liners are his default.

The boy’s expression hardens. “You’re not even going to give me a fight?”

“Are you traveling alone?” Wilbur ignores the bait. He finds, after a second of reflection, that the question is equal parts “Hey, are your parents going to pop out and kill me?” and “Hey, do you need a place to stay?” He’s not sure why he’s trying to look out for this kid- a hunter is a hunter. Hunters are bigots, killers. He’s setting himself up for a newspaper headline when his packmates are waiting for him to come home.

But there’s just something about this boy that makes his heart pang, a protective, almost—as much as he hates to say it—parental urge. There’s something here to solve.

The boy’s angry expression falters, peels off to reveal itchy, raw uncertainty, “Had a skirmish with another monster. Killed ‘em. Lost my partner.”

Wilbur’s face shifts nearly imperceptibly from curiosity to disgust to fear to pity. Maybe he judged wrong, too caught up in the softness of the boy’s cheeks to notice how dangerous he really was. His heartbeat picks back up to a steady thrum.

“I’ll find him again, I know I will. I just need to kill you, and then—”

Wilbur’s eyes widen, anxiety confirmed, and fear wraps its sharp claws around his lungs again, “Woah, hey—I have a family, okay, kid? I’m not trying to hurt anyone,” he laughs weakly, like coughing up cotton, “I’m just trying to get back to my family.”

The boy scowls up at him. His eyes are still unfocused. Wilbur’s stomach churns.

“It’s a full moon tonight.” He tries, and suddenly feels embarrassed. Somehow, he should be handling this better than he is. 

The boy is silent.

“I could—I could help you find your friend tomorrow? It’s nearly dark, I don’t want to—hurt anyone. Come on, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’m trying to kill you. You’re  _ supposed _ to want to hurt me.” The boy hisses, stubbornly clinging onto this concept of a duel he’s crafted up in his head. He spits it like a crazed animal, as if it’s Wilbur’s job to fight him, to kill him. 

“You’re a child.”

“I’m 16,” The boy says defensively, furrowing his brows even more, shifting on his feet and raising his shoulders like a dog’s hackles, “Just fight me, you fucking coward. You’re a beast.”

Anger radiates off of him, raw, desperate, red hot. Maybe Wilbur should be matching it, maybe he should give in and fight and win and pick up his shit and go. But for some reason, he doesn’t want to. It’s clear that all this instigating is protecting a sore spot, and under all that rage there’s just... a scared child.

How long has the boy been alone, anyway? What has he had to do to survive? Why is he trying so desperately to throw his life away?

“Listen—” He stops himself, stuck, “What’s your name?”

The boy licks his lips nervously.

“Tommy,” he says.

“Listen, Tommy, I want to help you. I’m not going to fight you. You’re hurt.” He gestures at the boy’s bloodied shoulder. As he looks at him more closely, Wilbur can see even more spots of deep brown stiffening the fabric of his clothes.

“I don’t want your help,” Tommy spits, but Wilbur can see that he’s breaking.

“But you need it. Just drop the gun, Tommy. Let me clean you up.”

For a few heart wrenching seconds, Wilbur watches as the gun shakes ever so slightly in Tommy’s grasp. A conflicted expression flashes across his face, his chest heaves. The world holds its breath. 

Tommy drops the gun, and relief washes over Wilbur in a rush. He lowers his hands. The shadows in the alley have stretched longer as they’ve stood there, he figures it must be somewhere around 5:30. He really needs to get home.

“Thank you,” Wilbur breathes.

“You should have just killed me,” Tommy whispers, tiredly. He stares down at the gun at his feet, the wet asphalt. He sinks into a defeated crouch. Wilbur watches as his flimsy walls break down around him, and feels like he’s intruding something private. 

Tommy’s shoulders spasm, then he gasps. He’s crying. Wilbur grimaces.

“I don’t kill people, especially not 16-year-olds,” He says, aching to help somehow but unsure where to start. There’s no protocol on how to handle murderous crying teenagers in his mental catalogue. “Can you tell me where you’re injured?” 

“I don’t know,” Tommy confesses, voice watery, “I don’t know.” 

“You look like you have blood on your arm, is it your blood?” Wilbur coaxes, crouching down to his level and scooching closer, like he’s approaching a stray cat.

“I don’t know, I don’t remember the fight,” Tommy sinks down until he’s sitting fully on the ground, and hugs his knees to his chest, “I don’t know where Tub- where my partner is. I woke up and he was gone.”

“Jesus Christ. Okay, so- you’re completely alone, yeah? Nobody is waiting for you?” There are a million questions running through Wilbur’s head—what is “the fight,” who allowed this kid to kill people, why does he seem so out of it, where is his partner—but those will all be easier answered somewhere other than an alleyway.

“No, nobody.”

“And you don’t have anywhere to go?”

Tommy shakes his head, trying to conserve air, and chokes out another sob. The snarling fighter has washed away in a second, leaving only a skin-clad skeleton shaking like a leaf. Wilbur purses his lips.

“We have a guest room, back at my place. I know you probably don’t want to trust me, but I think if I left a bleeding teenager in an alleyway the guilt would eat me alive for the rest of my life.” Wilbur says, straightening back up to give Tommy more space. He stares up at the sky for a moment, face twisted seriously, then seems to remember something. “Oh, I never told you my name—it’s Wilbur.”

Tommy stays quiet, curled in on himself. Wilbur leans down to pick up his grocery bag and inspect the water damage. He hums, relieved that nothing is too destroyed. They sit in heavy silence for a moment.

“Okay.” Tommy sniffles finally, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve. Wilbur stands awkwardly, hands in his pockets, like a husky whose owner recently brought home a baby and upon being foiled in its plan to eat it, doesn’t know what to do with itself. 

“The car is parked near the store, I could drive around closer if—” 

“No, it’s okay. Just—just give me a second.” 

Wilbur nods. He picks at the corner of his bag, waiting, as if there’s something incredibly interesting hidden between the layers of recycled paper. The gun gleams on the pavement between them, and Wilbur eyes it nervously. He crouches down silently to pick it up, carefully watching Tommy to make sure he doesn’t grab for it.

Tommy’s eyes pinch shut, and he rubs at them again. As his breathing becomes more even, he carefully picks himself up and stands a few feet away from Wilbur. He doesn’t mention the gun. He’s still fragile, shoulders hunched, trying to make his steps as quiet as possible. A ghost of the angry, violent persona he had just been; he trails behind Wilbur as they make their way to the car park. 

Wilbur opens the passenger side door for him with a gentle nod, then slips into his own seat and starts the car. He pauses to gingerly unload the gun and carefully place it at his feet. Cool air pours from the vent into Tommy’s face, and he wrinkles his nose at it. 

“It’ll get warmer, just give it a minute.” 

The drive is weird, to say the least. It’s finally dawning on Wilbur what exactly he’s getting himself into. He has no clue what baggage comes along with letting Tommy into their home; More hunters could be looking for him, tracking his every move right to their doorstep. He’s badly hurt as it is, maybe even worse than he seems, and it’s the full moon on top of that. Wilbur is going to have to resist his transformation, probably, and some of the others might have to, as well. 

But he can’t really bring himself to regret his decision.

He turns to Tommy for a moment as they sit stagnant at a red light, watches the lights bounce across his bruised face. His heart pangs, sympathy tingling in his fingertips. Tommy is tracing circles across a burned hole in the fabric lining the car door handle, seemingly lost in thought. Wilbur sighs and turns back to the road.

“Buckle your seatbelt, Tommy,” he says. 

Tommy looks up in surprise, startled out of his musing. He turns and buckles his seatbelt quietly. 

Anxiety brews like a storm in Wilbur’s gut as they crawl closer to the house. He stands by the fact that this was the right thing to do, mostly, but that doesn’t make it any less... complicated. Or inconvenient. He debates calling Niki, but by the time he’s come to the conclusion that that would be a good idea, they’re already nearly there.

Wilbur pulls the car into the driveway, tugs the key out of the ignition, and then leans back and breathes out tiredly.

“Well,” he says, staring up at the pilling on the soft fabric lining of the car, “this is going to be quite the next few...”

He trails off, unable to find an accurate measurement of time. Honestly, he has no clue how long this is going to disrupt his life. Wilbur looks over at the sound of shifting, only to find Tommy’s guarded blue eyes already trained on him. The boy sits nervously, pulled slightly away from the back of the seat, allowing Wilbur to see the rusty-looking blood stains his wounds had left on the fabric. God, those are going to be a bitch to get out.

He shakes his head, vowing to deal with that tomorrow, and unbuckles his own seatbelt. Tommy is prompted to do the same, after a few seconds of fussing with the button. He pushes open his door, steps out onto the wet gravel, and circles around to open Tommy’s door. The sky is dark grey, covered in clouds. Evening is approaching quickly.

Their house is tucked into a quaint neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. It’s normally sunlit and pretty, tall pines stretching up from one of the neighbor’s backyard and filling the air with an evergreen smell. There’s an empty flower bed right next to the place Wilbur has parked, and a banged up mailbox. The hidden sun casts airbrushed shadows across the wet front turf.

Wilbur tenderly helps Tommy up, careful to make sure none of his weight is put on his bad leg. He’s still worryingly quiet. Even though that’s to be expected from someone in a new, possibly deadly environment, it puts Wilbur on edge. Silent children are always in danger, his mother said once, after narrowly saving his cousin from slipping under the waves. You don’t have time for words if surviving is on your mind.

“You okay?” He checks while turning to walk up the short path to the door. Tommy nods, before realizing Wilbur isn’t facing him. 

“Yeah,” he says quietly.

Wilbur reaches the door and places his hand on the handle right as a light flickers on inside, shining in broken beams through the glass panel at the top of the door. The door is yanked open from the inside, and Wilbur smiles sheepishly at the person on the other side.

“Dude, where were you? We were so worried—” Fundy pauses, peeking his head out to follow Wilbur’s gaze, “you—there’s—”

“Whoops,” Wilbur says.

Fundy puts his head in his hands and groans, like hearing his friend’s voice has given him a headache on the spot. 

“God, what the fuck, Wil.”


End file.
